Today one of my customers called me to report the following Chrome problem when he opened websites that use the Adobe Flash Player or Shockwave Flash plugin (e.g. YouTube, Facebook, etc.): "This site uses a plugin (Adobe Flash Player) that will soon be unsupported – Could not load Shockwave flash". After doing some research, I discovered that from Chrome version 42 and higher, all websites or services that use NPAPI* plugins (e.g.: Silverlight, Facebook, Java, Unity, Google Earth, Google Talk, etc) will not be supported (won't work) anymore. On the other hand, all websites and services that use PPAPI** plugins (including the Chrome shipped plugins e.g. Adobe Flash, PDF Viewer, etc.) will continue to work.

The strange thing with the Adobe Flash or Shockwave Player loading problems, is that the most secure versions (PPAPI) of these plugins are already included in the latest Chrome versions installations so the problem could occur if Chrome loads an unsupported NPAPI plugin. In this tutorial you can learn how to resolve and bypass the Adobe Flash Player or/and shockwave load problems in your Google Chrome browser.

* NPAPI (Netscape Plugin Application Programming Interface) plugins have the full permissions of the current user and are not sandboxed or shielded from malicious inputs by Google Chrome.
** PPAPI (Pepper Plugin Application Programming Interface) plugins have limited permissions of the current user and they are more secure.

How to solve This site uses a plugin (Adobe Flash Player) that will soon be unsupported – Could not load Shockwave flash (Problem in Chrome).

1. Open your Chrome browser and at the address bar paste the following command and press Enter:

chrome://flags/#enable-npapi

2. Under Enable NPAPIMac, Windows, choose Enable.

3. Finally, press Prelaunch Now.

Solution 2. Disable Adobe Flash Player plugin in Chrome.

The "This site uses a plugin (Adobe Flash Player) that will soon be unsupported" or/and "Could not load Shockwave flash" problems can happen because Chrome loads two different versions of Flash player (or Shockwave) plugins every time it starts. In such situations, the solution to bypass the flash/shockwave player loading problems, is to disable the oldest version of these plugins (Flash Player or Shockwave Player) from Chrome Plugins.

1. Open your Chrome browser and at the address bar paste the following command and press Enter:

chrome://plugins

2. At the listed plugins, find if you have two versions of the same plugin. Then disable the oldest one. In the case that you have only one version of the Flash Player or Shockwave plugins (like the screenshot bellow) then disable that version.

3. Close and re-open Google Chrome. Your problem should be gone!

Additional help: if you still experience problems with Adobe Flash Player or Shockwave Player in Chrome:

1. Navigate to Windows control panel and completely uninstall the Adobe Flash Player & Shockwave Player plugins from your computer.

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One Comment

j.
Jul 05, 2015 @
00:00:25

A heads up about Chrome's PepperFlash and HTML5 – These do not work for everyone, which is why a lot of Chrome users are using the NPAPI Flash and a Chrome extension that works around HTML5. Chrome's devs have not responded with a fix that works so that everyone can permanently switch to PepperFlash and HTML5. As a result, a lot of users will be switching their browsers in September because they won't be able to use Chrome's options.